From Glenn Gutmacher: “The common feeling that Skill endorsements are largely meaningless may put a wrench in those plans.” Those plans being the use of skills as a filter for search results. Great idea, but they way endorsements have been (mis)used makes the searches inaccurate, misleading, and just garbage.

6 Responses to “LinkedIn Endorsements: Kickback from recruiters”

LinkedIn skills endorsements are a joke only if individuals and LinkedIn allow them to be. I believe that LinkedIn has implemented skills endorsements incorrectly (for example, LinkedIn uses the “blue box” approach and suggests skills that a person hasn’t even put on their profile) and it causes errors. Secondly, LinkedIn has done a terrible job of educating people on how the skills should be established and used. Lastly, people don’t know how to take control of the skills listed and endorsements they receive. The skills on my profile represent my REAL skills and I will stake my reputation on them. Rather than call them a joke, let’s tell LinkedIn how to fix the problems with them and teach everyone else we know how to utilize them correctly.

My experience with telling LinkedIn anything for the last 7 years has been a joke. I appreciate your suggestion but they don’t care about you or me or anyone… especially now that they are public. The ridiculousness that comes out of their product team amazes me. They can only do this because they have no competition (or, at least, they feel like they are the 8M pound guerrilla).

Also, if it is a flawed product (specifically skills and endorsements), why should we teach anyone (users/recruiters, etc.) to use it? And who is to say that it will stay around? I’m guessing it will but it will go in my history books as one of the dumbest product moves LI has put out (or taken away, right up there with taking out Answers).

I think I know what the next dumbest move will be but I’m crossing my fingers it doesn’t happen (and I’m not going to write about it on this blog for them to read).

Whether LinkedIn is an 8M pound gorilla or not, it is still the best alternative for me and it works. Yes, it is flawed, but what piece of software isn’t? Just look at Vista or Windows 8 for two examples to name a few. I’m still getting value out of LinkedIn and I will continue to do so until something better comes along. That’s why I teach people the right way to use it. I show them the best and worst LinkedIn has to offer and try to help them find the value that I do from using it. If LinkedIn doesn’t listen and doesn’t change someone will and will come up with something better. There’s always a better idea on the way. Until then I will keep using the best parts and helping people avoid the worst.

That’s why I wrote the post. Because imo the implementation of endorsements is one of the worst. My comment to yours was based on you suggestion I tell LI how to fix the problems, and teaching everyone else to use one of the worst things in LI “correctly.”

I’m clearly all about using the tool to get value, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to bang the LI drum every time they do anything.

Good comments all. I have endorsed people that I know personally and are known to me by reputation.
As in the comment above, it is a flawed system. But then, written recommendations in my opinion are flawed as well (no one will be objective when writing about member).

I use endorsements to stay on the radar of people I have worked with. That has been very effective.

Last comment: it takes some time to accumulate “99+” unsolicited endorsements for one specific skill. This has some merit in my view.